LOS ANGELES — Retired space shuttle Endeavour is completing its final journey with a 12-mile ride through busy city streets, its way cleared by sacrificing hundreds of trees, raising utility poles and removing traffic signals and other obstacles.

The two-day crawl through cross-town traffic is being treated as a once-in-a-lifetime celebration. There are designated viewing areas and plans for a Hollywood-style dance performance along the route to the shuttle's new home.

Starting before dawn Friday morning, crews are to roll Endeavour on wheels from a hangar at Los Angeles International Airport, where it landed last month on the back of a Boeing 747 jet. Its destination is the California Science Center, an education-focused museum run jointly by the state and a not-for-profit foundation. The center was awarded the last craft in NASA's fleet to orbit Earth before the shuttle program ended.

Five stories tall at the tail, 78 feet wide at its wingtips, 122 feet in length and weighing 85 tons, the shuttle is the largest object ever routed through the city's streets, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa says.

Endeavour will have only inches of clearance in some spots as it rides slowly atop a frame built by NASA. It will be propelled most of the way by four multi-axle remote-controlled transporters capable of turning on a dime, crabbing sideways and skirting around urban obstacles.

Seeing a marketing opportunity, Toyota has gotten in on the spectacle. To cross the Manchester Boulevard bridge over the I-405 freeway, the shuttle will be moved onto a smaller, lighter set of wheels and towed behind a stock Tundra V-8 pickup. Toyota has been promoting its role on a website and a billboard along I-405.

"We're always trying to show Tundra's capabilities,'' says Russ Koble, Toyota advertising and planning manager. He said the automaker has contributed "a significant amount'' of money to the science center for the shuttle move but declined to say how much.

Once it has crossed the bridge, Endeavour will be moved back onto its original transporter for the rest of the journey.

Rudolph estimates the cost of moving Endeavour from airport to museum at $10 million, including replanting trees, restoring streetlights and making amends to affected neighborhoods. All of it is being financed by donations to the center, he said, part of a $200 million fundraising campaign to develop and highlight the museum's new main attraction and sustain the museum's operations.

"The taxpayers are not paying for it,'' Rudolph says. "We have had tremendous community support.''

That support has not been universal among residents along the shuttle's path.

"There definitely is some talk about how they're bringing the space shuttle through the ghetto,'' says Heather Presha, a real state agent.

The shuttle's route takes it through the neighboring city of Inglewood, then up Crenshaw Boulevard through South Los Angeles, a major Latino and black urban core. It will pass through Leimert Park, a leafy, historic neighborhood that for decades has been the heart of the city's African-American arts scene.

It will make a 90-degree right turn at Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and head east to Exposition Park, where the museum has a temporary indoor home awaiting.

The museum, near Memorial Coliseum and the University of Southern California campus, plans to showcase the shuttle by standing it upright in a vertical display attached to its rocket boosters, Rudolph says.

"Overall, it's a good idea to have the shuttle there,'' Presha says. "I wish there was some other way they could have done it without cutting down the trees. ... It's just sacrilegious to cut down the trees.''

Rudolph says planners tried to minimize the loss of mature shade trees, and many of the trees were undesirable and invasive varieties. In Inglewood, 128 trees were already targeted for eventual replacement by the city, and some of the Los Angeles trees would have been claimed eventually by subway construction, he said.

Most of those cut down were less than 15 feet tall or less than a foot in diameter, the center said in a statement.

"Some of the trees they are replacing have damaged sidewalks,'' says Linda Morgan, a neighborhood council representative in the nearby West Adams area. But, she says, the communities feel picked on sometimes: "From my perspective, being African American, we say, 'They don't tear down Beverly Hills.'"

Eddie North-Hager, who maintains a community website, LeimbertParkBeat.com, says "there are still a lot of people who are upset'' about tree loss. He says residents were able to voice concerns in advance to the center, and he believes most recognize the value of having the shuttle so close by.

North-Hager says center officials have promised to provide science training for area teachers and scholarships for local children to attend summer science camps. Admission will be free to see the shuttle at the museum, he notes.

"Everybody's really concerned,'' he says. "I think, though, there's actually an overwhelming understanding at the same time that we're getting one of the greatest creations man has ever made coming through our neighborhood and actually being installed just down the street.''

Trees are a sensitive issue in an inner city where shade is often at a premium. Presha says residents frequently complain that the city is slow to trim trees that line streets.

Rudolph says that as a result of meetings with community groups, the science center will prune surviving trees along the route and through affected neighborhoods. It also will maintain the transplanted trees for several years.

"We agreed to do a lot of tree trimming,'' he says.

At least 29 utility poles along the route have been replaced with 90-foot tall wooden poles that will allow clearance for cable TV, electrical and other above-ground wiring, says Ben Monasseri, construction manager with Time-Warner Cable. The company says it has donated $1 million and an equal amount of unreimbursed construction costs to the project.

At some street crossings, cables were taken down and moved underground, he says. Lowest lines along the shuttle's route will be 64 feet off the ground, allowing the 58-foot-tall shuttle tail section to clear easily.

Streets and sidewalks will be closed a mile ahead of the shuttle as it advances, allowing crews to take down traffic signals, streetlights and other remaining obstacles. Once the shuttle passes, crews will reinstall them before reopening streets to traffic.

Locals can watch from their yards, homes and stores, but police have urged people to go to designated viewing areas such as the Inglewood City Hall or the intersection of Crenshaw and King boulevards, where the shuttle will stop briefly and a music and dance program will go on, produced by TV and movie choreographer Debbie Allen.

Police have issued warnings of traffic congestion, crowds and difficulty getting near the moving shuttle due to sidewalk and street closures.

The city got practice at handling such a move in March with a heavier but smaller object. A granite boulder weighing 340 tons was trucked from a quarry more than 100 miles away through the city to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to become an art installation called Levitated Mass.

The trip took 11 daysand though it drew gawkers, the rock had none of the star power of Endeavour, an engineering marvel that took its human crews 122.9 million miles through space before settling in Los Angeles.